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Peter Tieryas tells the story of how Harlan Ellison's famous short story became a game, Cecilia D'Anastasio's The Truth About Video Game Addiction, firing of two ArenaNet employees leads to worries about the danger caused for employees when large companies immediately cave to mobs and to more discussion about workers rights and the need for unions, Ludocriticism's video on The Forest and how it uses the video game medium to enable instead of show, the Waypoint staff talks to 14 developers about how they deal with crunch, Brendan Sinclair interviews Keita Takahashi and learns how he views his career, Warframe shows off new expansion, AI and Games' Behind the AI and Storytelling of Spec Ops The Line, Johnny Cullen on how Journey only truly made sense when almost everything had been cut, multiple indie games get release dates, Raycevick looks at Need for Speed: Most Wanted 13 Years Later, and more.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Alpha Protocol, Fallout 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity, and Divinity: Original Sin 2. You might assume this is simply a list of some of the best, most reactive RPGs ever made, but it’s actually just some of the amazing video games Chris Avellone has written for.

Anthem’s characters are voiced, and you'll get the choice of a male or female character at the beginning of the game. In a tweet posted earlier today, Anthem’s lead producer, Michael Gamble, confirmed that your character will have a voice actor that you can hear during both cutscenes and gameplay.

For me, one of the most jarring things about Anthem’s E3 showing was the revelation that numbers would pop out of enemies as you shoot them, representing the damage you’re dealing. While it's a common trope in RPGs like Diablo, I found that they felt out of touch with Anthem’s overall theme, disrupting the appearance of the beautiful world BioWare has created. Thankfully, however, you can turn them off.

By digging into the darkness of Taiwan’s past, Red Candle Games’ 2017 sleeper indie horror hit Detention managed to push some buttons that I didn’t know I had. If you haven’t given it a spin, go grab the deluxe edition on Steam, because you’re going to want that soundtrack. You know, for when you need terror to inspire you at the gym, or when you really need to speed-up your nightly jog. Building on the static-obsessed foundations of Detention, the follow-up title Devotion now has a trailer and a plot summary. It looks like Red Candle Games is going to stick to what they do best: teeth-grindingly upsetting history lessons.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice isn't exactly Dark Souls with a ninja reskin. For starters, Sekiro's protagonist is a set character, not a customisable avatar as per previous From Software titles. This titular playable character is a ninja sworn to protect a young lord - the ten-year-old boy seen in Sekiro's announcement trailer. There's something special about this boy and his bloodline that makes him a target to outside influences, and a clan called the Ashina send a samurai to capture him. In trying to protect his charge, the ninja hero has his arm cut off and is left for dead, and the young lord is taken. When the hero wakes up, he's got a strange contraption where his arm used to be that From is calling the Shinobi Prosthetic, and it's put there possibly care of the ambiguous character currently referred to as The Sculptor, who does most of the talking in the games's E3 trailer.

Dead Island 2 is one of my favorite trailers of all time for a game I’d all but given up on seeing. Back in 2014, the studio Yager was developing the then announced title for Deep Silver, and in 2016 the production was moved to Sumo Digital. As a reminder, it is now 2018, so Dead Island 2 and its Santa Monica-ish muder-setting seem like they have been abandoned. That is, until, Deep Silver dropped a free-to-play tower defense game called Dead Island: Survivors. The Internet has some questions about whether this mobile tie-in was taking the place of the long gestating title, and Deep Silver responded.

Death end re;Quest, which first launched in Japan in April, is coming west for PlayStation 4 both physically and digitally in early 2019, publisher Idea Factory International announced. It will feature both English and Japanese voice-overs.

One of Aksys’ Anime Expo 2018 announcements was to reveal it will be publishing Lentera’s action-adventure game, Ghost Parade. It first appeared on Steam Greenlight in November 2015, and will now be coming to the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PC in 2019.

Terry Cavanagh, the creator of Super Hexagon, VVVVVV, and Tiny Heist, has revealed that his next project is a roguelike called Dicey Dungeons. Being developed in conjunction with artist Marlowe Dobbe and musician Chipzel (who also did the music for Super Hexagon), Dicey Dungeons features six unique characters battling their way through a pixel art dungeon, with their fates determined by a roll of the dice.

One otome game was announced at Aksys’ Anime Expo 2018 panel. Code: Realize ~Wintertide Miracles~ will be heading to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in North America and Europe. People will be able to find it in 2019.

Last year, I met Christopher Obritsch, the indie developer whose boss is his 7-year-old daughter Maddie. Under the banner of Causal Bit Games, the pair's debut venture Battle Princess Madelyn is a Ghosts' N Ghouls-inspired retro sidescroller. It's got a new trailer, and a new Kickstarter backer update.

Monster Hunter: World will launch on Steam on August 9. In a rare exception to the general rule that games get delayed, that's earlier than we were expecting - publisher Capcom had previously planned to launch in autumn. That said, it came out on consoles in January, so.

The wait for Monster Hunter: World to hit PC is almost over, as we only have a month to go until the port’s release. It’ll put your computer to work, too, with some fairly stiff recommended specs to reach 1080p at 30fps - and that curious phrasing had some fans wondering if the game would have frame rates capped at 30.

Bad news if you’re a Monster Hunter fan who’s particular about DRM - Monster Hunter: World will launch with Denuvo Anti-Tamper when it comes to PC next month. Like some of Capcom’s other major PC releases, the game will have an additional layer of DRM in addition to activation on Steam.

At Anime Expo 2018, Aksys revealed it is bringing a horror novel that is not an otome game to North America and Europe. The company has picked up Death Mark and will release it on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in both regions. No release date has been announced.

Far Cry 5’s second DLC is set to release soon, with Lost on Mars taking us away from the bounds of planet Earth in favor of more alien locales and exotic enemies. Ubisoft has given us a quick taste with a new teaser trailer, as well as a release date slated for July 17.

Sonic Mania was a joy – a true return to form for Sega’s spiky blue mascot. It’s due to get even better later this month. Sonic Mania Plus, is a re-release (available as a $5 upgrade for existing owners) adding two new playable characters from the little-known SegaSonic The Hedgehog arcade game, plus some new content. In the first of a series of developer diaries, we get a peek at the new characters in action. Plus an all-too-brief glimpse at Encore mode; a second loop through the game with new lighting, cutscenes and enemy placement.

In April, Valve made changes to Steam that bolstered user privacy while hammering a few nails into the coffin of unofficial sales tracking monolith Steam Spy. The service is not 100 percent dead, but developers have been searching for alternatives. Last month, they found one. Now it’s been shut down, too.

Price says that prior to being fired, the company had never discussed her social media presence with her or issued a warning for anything she had posted. “If it was covered in orientation, I wouldn’t know. I got pulled out of orientation to jump into rebreaking the story arc for this season of Living World.” Furthermore, she says ArenaNet was not only aware of her outspoken approach to discussing similar issues on social media but encouraging of it.

For further context, Jessica Price joined ArenaNet around a year ago and the r/Guildwars2 post announcing her arrival was eventually locked by moderators because some posters took instant umbrage with Price’s Twitter account, fearing that the game might be affected by “SJW agendas.” Price worked previously at Paizo Inc, makers of the Pathfinder pen-and-paper RPG, and had been open on Twitter, in interviews and in PAX panels about sexism in the tabletop industry, including specific instances of harassment she had experienced.

For additional context, Price has been a vocal feminist, as well as a critic and target of misogynist hate groups and those who oppose the very concept of a more inclusive industry.

It's difficult to parse out how much of the backlash stemmed from players genuinely upset with how a developer addressed a fellow fan, and how much was rooted in opposition to Price's personal beliefs. (Even at an individual level, separating one's feelings about a person's past or politics from their actions in the present can be tricky.) Regardless, the backlash was not exclusively the work of Guild Wars 2 fans or misogynists, even if they both got what they wanted by working together.

Please believe me when I say that every woman I know in game dev has experienced this constantly. The men they speak with - friends, acquaintances, or even just those in polite conversation will assume that position of authority and speak as if they are equals or even more knowledgeable than the female dev, despite the massive difference in experience, contextual knowledge, and training. It happens to them all the time. I have seen it happen countless times firsthand. These men explain to her over and over and over and over how the devs should just do this and not that and it’s so easy and so on and so forth, but they treat her worse than her male colleagues. It isn’t even necessarily because they are doing it consciously or out of ill intent. It’s just that subconscious sense of entitlement and ownership, the same reason that fans of a particular franchise will get bent out of shape if a publisher takes a franchise in a different direction than what they want.

ArenaNet’s actions contribute to normalizing a work environment in which employees’ personal social media accounts are monitored, where they are expected to perform PR for their company outside of working hours (with no compensation whatsoever, regardless of whether or not it is part of their job description) and where they can be arbitrarily fired with no warning.

“He caved to a handful of people and an army of bots and sock puppets,” she added. “Now he’s got almost every female developer I know — as well as some men — furious with him. I’ve got recruiters pinging me promising they’ll steer candidates away from ArenaNet, and game design professors saying they’re going to warn their students away. I’ve also had a lot of ArenaNet co-workers and other industry colleagues contacting me to express how afraid this has made them.”

The fact that this keeps happening shows a clear disconnect between the managers in charge of these companies and the actual workers whose creative labour produces the videogames that the companies benefit from. For all the hopeful talk about videogame development becoming more open and more diverse (and indeed it has), many companies are still stuck in their conservative and craven ways, more concerned with placating the boisterous gamer mobs – that the industry itself cultivated as a stable consumer base throughout the 1990s – than with supporting the wellbeing and safety of their workers. The workers are stuck in a bind, flanked by a managerial class on one side that sees them as disposable and a consumer class on the other that sees them as slaves.

“[CEO Mike O’Brien] told me I was going to look back and regret this because we were doing amazing work and I ruined it,” Price said. “The only regrets I’ve ever had, however, have been in situations where I didn’t stand up for myself, not ones in which I did, and I don’t expect that to change any time soon. My only real regret here is that I encouraged other women to come on board and promised them it was a safe company for them.”

She said that the Guild Wars 2 community was mostly supportive. The problem, in her eyes, is that studios tend to structure themselves around the small percentage that isn’t.

I'm sure all the people having tantrums are also sending 100s of messages to the CEOs of Stardock, Quantic Dream, and Warhorse Studios demanding that they are removed from the company for doing things that are actually bad, repeatedly, for years.

GuardianCon is an annual two-day gaming convention held in Tampa, Florida, but for many people the event is all about the week-long charity livestream marathon leading up to the convention itself. GuardianCon 2018 kicked off its 'Charity Blitz' earlier this week, with all proceeds going toward St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, and it's seen a bunch of fun streams since, with many streamers offering amusing donation milestones like shaving their eyebrows or wearing flamboyant cosplay. At the time of writing, the event has raised over $1.7 million of its $2.4 million goal (the daily operating cost of St. Jude).

The French gambling regulator has ruled that loot boxes do not constitute gambling. In a report issued last week, regulatory body the Autorité de Regulation des Jeux en Ligne (ARJEL) stated that while there are some similarities between loot boxes in popular online games and gambling, they are not in breach of the country’s gambling laws.

Not everyone loves the new version of Star Wars: Battlefront. Some people (and I’m just vaguely referencing the general concept of people, not saying that this is something that I PERSONALLY FEEL STRONGLY ABOUT) some of these people, well, they like the old SWBFs. When the cancelled Free Radical shooter developed Star Wars: Battlefront 3 had footage leaked to the internet, a group of fans saw the potential of these ideas and set out to make their own finished project in the same vein. Things did not go well.

If you’ve ever wanted to launch a glistening esports career alongside your university studies, you’re in luck. The University of Roehampton has launched the UK's first ever esports scholarship, awarded to talented students who show a clear interest in the growing esports industry.

"In the core 18-24 age group the lack of awareness was 19 per cent of men and 52 per cent of women," said Women in Games. "The 'awareness gap' between genders creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that allows some men in esports to say that women are not interested in esports."

When one of World of Warcraft’s top ten guilds recruited Cam as their chief hunter, his suicidal thoughts surged. To earn the enviable invitation, Cam had spent 16 hours a day grinding on WoW, to the detriment of everything else. He told his father he’d scored a job at a local restaurant, but every day after his dad dropped him off at the McDonald’s across the street, Cam would hop the first bus home and log back on. There was no job. There would be no paycheck. Cam’s only obligation was to his night elf hunter, and it was an all-consuming commitment.

The first time that Cyberdreams producer David Mullich showed author Harlan Ellison a page of the dialogue he’d written for the 1995 game based on his short story “I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream,” Ellison asked, “Who wrote this shit?” When Mullich replied that he had, Ellison got visibly embarrassed and apologized. “No, that’s all right,” Mullich replied. “It is shit compared to your writing. So, take it and make it better.”

Jenova Chen, the co-founder of Thatgamecompany and creative director of Journey, played a lot of World of Warcraft during grad school. And he always knew that he wanted to make an MMO one day - a form of games that are synonymous, rightly or wrongly, with scope and scale.

And yet when Chen started to make games, the games his studio turned out tended to be small - or at least they seemed small, before you got properly into them. In Flow, you are a tiny amoeba or some such, swimming about in the watery deep. In Flower, you are a handful of petals riding the winds. These games are beautiful, but, they remain compact - nothing like the sprawl of a Warcraft.

Almost four years ago, Mark Brown posted a YouTube video on adaptive soundtracks in games. The piece, snappily edited and confidently narrated, could have stood alone as a neat look behind the curtain at the tricks used by designers when creating a musical score that reacts to the player’s actions. However, the quality of Mark Brown’s first video served a larger purpose: a statement of intent. More than 90 videos and 450,000 subscribers later, Game Maker’s Toolkit has proven itself to be a wide-ranging, insightful, and consistent source of game analysis on YouTube.

Every time I see Ghost Of A Tale I’m taken aback by its beauty. Its world of cracked flagstones, knurled furniture, twisting passages, haphazard towers and lush vegetation looks like it’s truly lived in by its population of woodland creatures; by authoritarian rats, scurrying criminal mice and pirate frogs

Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is one of the most introspective looks into the Star Wars universe. Written by gaming veteran Chris Avellone, KOTOR II's development process was fueled by hatred but used to channel creativity in an introspective fashion. Something it taught me over a decade after its release.

This essay is a review and critique of the 2018 game The Forest, and how it uses the video game medium to enable instead of show. It's an old axiom for fiction to show and not tell, but video games are positioned differently. Without much of a narrative, The Forest still manages to be unique in how it uses what little of it it does have. It's also precisely why the PC needs and open climate to smaller games—which isn't really an issue anymore, but it's still nice to see why it can be such a good thing. For a team of more or less four people, Endnight Games, it's a triumph.

A new video series called “The Cutting Room Floor” delves into the cut content of Fallout: New Vegas, and host Griffin Lambert sorts out information gleaned from strategy guides, patch changes, game files, and dialogue to paint a picture of what New Vegas was meant to be.

GTV 59 "Famicom Wars! Nintendo Vs. Sharp" Sharp sold a Famicom (ファミコン) in 1979!? It forced Nintendo to use the name Family Computer. Where does the Twin Famicom fit in all this? Learn all about the unknown copyright dispute 40 years ago!